As part of the annual commemoration event, WFWP Portugal in partnership with City hall OF Odivelas and UPF held a Seminar on the International Day of Peace, in Odivelas City, for the third consecutive year, to celebrate the International Day of Peace. It took place on 21 Sept 2015 in the Lisbon City Hall Auditorium. WFWP began efforts to create the program, invitation letter, send them out with logistic support from HQ and UPF. The City Hall has supported us with the transfer of its auditorium and dissemination so, the Seminar was attended by 42 people.
The opening session was addressed by Dr. Paulo Ribeiro - Representative of the City Council and Dra. Marta de Carvalho - WFWP’s National President, who spoke on the Theme: “Citizenship for Peace”.
Most of the speakers were representatives of collaborating organizations (FFWPU – by our current National Leader, Dr. Sergio Neto; AVA - by its President, Dra. Mª Candida Campos; CAPACITARE by its President, Dra. Carla Marina Santos; CULTURFACE - by its President, Dr. Celso Soares and; ALQUIMIA ALIMENTAR - by its President, Dra. Isabel Costa). There also was Prof. DELMAR GONÇALVES – AfP, and Dr. Liberto Silva - former national leader.
The Seminar program consisted of: Opening Session and two separated panels with eight interventions all together, separated by a 20-minutes coffee break. There were were also three cultural moments and the event started with one of them, by three of our loving oriental members who sang three songs. During the program there also had two professional artists – Isaly and Michel William who sang three songs each and was wonderful to the audience.
At the opening session given by Alderman Registrar, he expressed his appreciation to work with our organizations for the 3rd consecutive year (WFWP&UPF) especially in this important day.
The WFWP’s President – Drª Marta de Carvalho - in her address spoke about the theme "Citizenship for Peace”, welcomed the opportunity and expressed how happy she was also to work with the county. After the introduction she also said that “citizenship for peace is only possible when there are people of peace, which should emerge from imbued peaceful families of true love”.
The first panel began with a tribute to Rev. Sun Myung Moon´s life as Co-Founder of WFWP & UPF, by first former national leader - Dr. Liberto Silva – who, after few words showed the introductory video of SunHak Peace prize. From other addresses we also had our current National leader – Dr. Sergio Neto - speaking on “Contributions of FFWPU in Values for Citizenship”; and UPF’s President – José Sergio Vieira, who spoke about “Comprehensive character education strategies”.
tThe atmosphere was very nice and the whole program was held with great attention and interest from the guests. We felt the City Hall is very interested in working with us.
Report by Marta de CarvalhoWFWP Portugal President